Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Pagan books are two a penny these days. Well all right, they're generally a lot more than a penny, but you get my drift.

In my opinion, if you want to know how the Early English worshipped their gods in the days before St Augustine and his merry band of God-botherers came over and persuaded the King of Kent of the necessity of Real Politik -- sixth century Vatican style -- then this is the book for you.

There have been other excellent studies;Hilda Davidson, and Prudence Jones and Nigel Pennick have produced historical studies on the pagan beliefs of Europe; Brian Bates has given us a Saxon shaman (with a nod to Carlos Castenada); and Jan Vries has produced some intense workbooks for those who really do what to get serious about it all....

But for my money, this little study is masterpiece.It's crisp, concise, and to the point.Waes Hael

There are plenty of books detailing Celtic mythology out there, but very few concerned with Anglo Saxon deity worship; however,this is one of the best you will find. Any internet browsing will give you a list of Saxon gods and goddesses, but not furnish you with how they melded with Christianity, and they themselves having changed form from their original shapes - the gods once feminine or exalted ones not so ( Tiwaz). If one wants books to seriously inform you of our spiritual heritage, then this alongside the seminal ' Religion and the Decline of Magic', I would say, is a must. Branston argues convincingly of the relationship between Norse and Saxon mythologies as being intertwined and of just how powerfully paganism was rooted in England, despite the teachings of The Church to the contrary... Branston contends, the Saxon mind could readily accept the idea of a wounded, beloved hero going into the underworld and returning to life in the form of Christ, because the story was an old one in the form of Balder - Likewise the Celts with Lugh - hence the gods were lost as Christianity spread, but are (through archaeological finds) being rediscovered. I just wish that the Staffordshire Hoard had been found before he wrote the book.